Most serious musicians are
always looking for ways to maximize their practice time. One useful approach
is to find, or develop, exercises which work on several different aspects of
our playing at one time. It's also important that the exercises can be applied
to real playing situations. This allows us to practice making music instead
of just developing technique. By following this approach we can get more bang
for our practicing buck. With
that in mind, let's take a look at an exercise I picked up from Sheldon White
at the drumset.com message
forum. First we'll examine why it's a good exercise. Then we'll take a look
at some ways to vary and extend it in order to increase it's usefulness.

Here's the basic pattern:

Ex. 1

The following MP3 demonstrates
the basic exercise at both a slow and medium fast tempo.

This is an excellent exercise
because it develops hand technique, jazz coordination, musical touch, and polyrhythms,
all at the same time. It's also a practical musical 'lick' which can be applied
in real playing situations. Additionally, it's 'open-ended'. By that I mean
that there are numerous ways the exercise can be varied and extended to meet
different technical and musical requirements. Being 'open-ended' is an important
characteristic of a good exercise.

Let's break this exercise
down and take a look at some of these areas individually.

Hand technique:

This exercise is great for
developing speed and accent control in the left-hand. When playing the exercise
it's important to bring out the accents and play the unaccented notes softly.
The technique which allows you to most easily accomplish this is the Moeller
stroke. The Moeller technique uses a 'whipping' motion to play the accented
notes and the natural rebound of the stick to play the unaccented notes. In
essence you are getting several notes 'for the price of one'. A detailed explanation
of the Moeller technique is beyond the scope of this article, but if you would
like more information there are several good resources: Jim Chapin's video,
Speed, Power, and Endurance; Dom Famularo's book, It's Your Move;
and a recent Modern Drummer article by John Riley, The Moeller Stroke Revealed
(Modern Drummer-March 2002).

An excellent way to practice
the hand portion of this exercise, is by playing both hands on a single surface,
such as a snare drum or practice pad. (See example 2.)

Ex. 2

Although it appears simple,
I strongly encourage you to try this. It will make very obvious any coordination
problems between your hands. All notes which are played by both hands together
should produce one sound. No flam sounds are allowed. Pay particular attention
to notes in which one hand accents and the other doesn't, such as count one.
There may be a strong tendency to play such notes as flams. This must be avoided.
Exercise 2 will really 'lock-down' the cordination of your hands.

Touch and Balance of
Sound:

When practicing the basic
exercise (example 1) on the entire drumset, focus on the balance of sound between
the various instruments. The ride cymbal should predominate. The accents in
the left-hand should be played medium to medium loud. The unaccented left-hand
notes should be played softy. Play the bass drum very softly on straight quarter
notes. Play the hi hat with a strong 'chick' sound on counts 2 and 4. In actual
playing situations you may not always play the bass drum on straight quarters,
but in those situations it will be easy to omit it. On the other hand, if you
never practice 'four on the floor,' it will be much more difficult to add the
bass drum when necessary. Therefore, you should spend a reasonable amount of
time practicing straight quarter notes on the bass drum so that you will have
the necessary technique and control when it's required.

Polyrhythms:

If you examine the snare
drum part in exercise 1 you will notice that it consists of eighth-note triplets
that are accented in groups of four notes. In other words, the snare drum accents
on the first note, the fifth note and the ninth note of the eighth-note triplets.
By accenting eighth-note triplets in groupings of four notes we are actually
playing three evenly spaced accents in the space of time normally reserved for
four quarter notes. Therefore, while the right hand plays a quarter note based
jazz ride cymbal rhythm, the accents in the left hand are implying a polyrhythm
(or polymeter) of 3, against the right hand's 4. (Note: If you aren't familiar
with polyrhythms, or you would like more information on the subject, please
see my article, Understanding Polyrhythms.
)

Example 3 shows three different
ways the polyrhythm could be notated. Each of these measures will sound identical
when played on ride cymbal and snare. As you can see from the third measure
of the example, we are playing three evenly spaced notes in the period of time
normally reserved for four quarter notes. In other words, we are playing a 3:4
polyrhythm (or polymeter). The 3 against 4 polyrhythm is the same rhythm outlined
by the accents of our basic exercise.

Ex. 3

To further reinforce the
feeling of the polyrhythm Exercise 4 alternates between 2 measures of the basic
exercise, and then 2 measures of the polyrhythm.

Without looking very deeply
into the subtleties of our basic exercise, it should be apparent that it helps
your jazz coordination. You are playing a jazz cymbal rhythm in the right-hand,
eighth-note triplets in the left hand, while the bass drum plays straight quarters
and the hi-hat plays counts 2 and 4. What may be less obvious is that by incorporating
the left hand accents we are taking this exercise to another level of coordination.
It's almost as though we have added a fifth limb. The snare drum becomes 'two
voices.' One being the unaccented notes, and the other being the accented notes
(which are implying a polyrhythm).

So far we've seen how the
exercise develops polyrhythms, technique, musical touch, and coordination. Now
let's see how we can expand it. One of the trademarks of a good exercise is
it's 'open-endedness.' How much room does it allow for creativity and musical
variation? How many different ways can you find to use it? By exploring different
musical and technical applications of an exercise you will greatly enhance it's
usefulness, while at the same time developing your own creativity.

Exercise
5 develops the ability of the left-hand to move smoothly between the small tom
and the snare drum. The accented notes are played on the small tom while the
unaccented notes are played on the snare drum.

Ex. 5

A large part of developing
technique on the drumset involves being able to move smoothly from drum to drum.
By expanding the basic exercise to include horizontal motions around the drumset,
we are developing this ability. This
is just one of many variations we could come up with. We could also play the
accented notes on the snare drum and the unaccented notes on the small tom.
We could incorporate the floor tom. We could also add other sound sources. Use
your imagination and come up with variations which move the left-hand around
the drumset in different ways.

The next two examples show
how we might incorporate the bass drum into our basic exercise to further develop
coordination between the bass and snare.

Exercise 6 moves the accented
notes to the bass drum. The unaccented notes are played on the snare drum.

Ex. 6

Exercise 7 moves the accented
notes to the snare drum. The unaccented notes are played on the bass drum.

Ex. 7

This MP3 demonstrates the
basic exercise and then runs through exercises 5, 6, and 7.

The following two examples
demonstrate how we can incorporate the hi-hat. The pattern is now broken up
between the hi-hat and snare drum. The right hand plays the jazz cymbal rhythm
and the bass drum plays straight quarter notes.

Ex. 8

Ex. 9

Lastly, here is an exercise
which alternates a straight quarter-note accent pattern in the first measure
with the 3 against 4 polyrhythm pattern in the second measure. For additional
practice go back through all of the examples above utilizing this new two measure
accent pattern.

Ex. 10

These suggestions just scratch
the surface. I hope that some of these ideasmay
help enhance your practice time and maximize the drumset exercises you are working
on. The most important thing to remember is to practice music, not just technique.